Walking the streets of Boston

BOSTON -- With my wife in meetings for two days, I've been walking the streets and riding the T trains of Boston. Despite some chilly February breezes, I can't think of a better walking city. We're staying with an old college friend in Brookline. It's an easy although crammed Green Line train into the city in the morning. I've strolled along the Atlantic Wharf, where a new Boston Tea Party Museum is slated to open this summer. I found a great bagel/coffee spot called the Sorelle Cafe at 282 Congress Street, with scrumptious whole wheat bagels, smoked salmon and sweet soul music.

The Freedom Trail is so easy to follow, just find the double red-brick path and for $5 or $7.50 there are tours of the Old South Meeting House where Ben Franklin was baptized to Paul Revere's Old North Church. At the old Statehouse, I learned the Boston Massacre was no massacre. Only five young trouble makers were killed but the aforementioned Revere started the media manipulation business and distorted the facts in a widely circulated drawing that showed the redcoats firing all at once when it was more of a melee.

Outside his church, I met a couple guys playing cribbage in an espresso bar with Martha Stewart blaring on the TV. I lunched on some great Sicilian Eggplant Parmesan at the Florentine Cafe near an old Italian church at 33 Hanover Street. Then I hopped on the Red Line train and wandered around Harvard, browsing the Harvard Coop bookstore before a burger and some beers at the Casablanca in Cambridge with Boston-area writer Bob Katz, whose novel "Third and Long' I reviewed a few years ago -- only to learn later our brothers are best friends. (Photos: Looking up the spiral stairs of the old Statehouse and the old North Church from where Paul Revere warned Bostonians about the redcoats)

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